Revolutionising information discovery through hybrid Search
Turn2us is a national charity providing practical support to people who are facing financial shocks and life-changing events. Their digital platforms serve as a lifeline, offering access to the ‘Benefits Calculator’, ‘Grants Search’ tool, and a wealth of advisory content designed to help individuals navigate the complexities of the UK welfare system.
As a charity that has always looked to lead the way with technology and innovation, we were delighted to help Turn2us use AI to improve their online offer. Our focus has been on implementing high-impact projects that transform how service users find and interact with vital information.
Turn2us identified that traditional keyword search was a barrier for many. Following the completion of our initial strategy phase, we embarked on a multi-stage project to modernise their search capabilities.
“EBM were great to work with. They took the time to listen to the problem and suggested the best approach based on that. Their openness, flexibility and solution-oriented attitude while trialling this new technology made sure it went smoothly.”
The core challenge for Turn2us users was finding relevant guidance when they didn’t know the specific “policy language” to search for. To solve this, we developed a sophisticated search tool that understands both specific keywords and the broader intent of a user’s query.
Unlike standard search bars, this solution uses Hybrid Search (Dense + Sparse). The ‘Sparse’ element ensures that specific keywords and technical terms are captured accurately, while the ‘Dense’ element uses vector embeddings to understand the context and meaning of long, conversational sentences. This ensures that whether a user types a single word or describes a complex life situation, the results are pinpoint accurate.
A custom tool that refreshes fortnightly to keep pace with changing welfare guidance.
This automated pipeline handles the heavy lifting, crawling the site, extracting data, “chunking” it into digestible pieces, and embedding it into a Vector Database.
To ensure the search tool is always available, we implemented a blue-green deployment strategy. This allows for zero-downtime reindexing; while the new data is being prepared, the “live” site continues to serve users without interruption.
The search is delivered via a high-performance API that Turn2us has integrated directly into their website, providing a seamless experience for the end user.
By moving to a semantic, hybrid search model, Turn2us is ensuring that no one is left behind because they didn’t use the “right” words.
Users find relevant advisory pages that were previously buried under keyword-heavy results.
The automated indexing pipeline and blue-green deployment ensure that the information provided is always current and the service is always online.
Combined with Turn2us’ AI Agent they now provide two very powerful options for discovering information and finding guidance, allowing the charity to support more people in more depth.
Building on the accuracy of the new search results, a potential future phase allows users to go beyond a list of links. We are exploring an AI discovery agent that enables users to explore search results through natural language conversation.
Using the same RAG database, this agent would act as a digital advisor. After a search is performed, a user could ask further questions that really help tackle their specific situations. By allowing users to ‘dive deeper’ into the content, you are providing an even more personalised experience.
“This project is a perfect example of how modern AI technologies can be used to enhance your core digital experience. Crucially, it is also a very safe and secure solution. The implementation is one of several steps we hope to take to enable Turn2us to use AI more effectively and ultimately improve their services for those in need.”
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